


Bleeding Edge

by succubusybody



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AI ethics, Allergic reaction, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Complete, Controlling Ben Solo, Dark Reylo Anthology, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Mind Manipulation, Non-Graphic Violence, Peanut allergy, Power Imbalance, Rape/Non-con Elements, Revenge, Robot Sex, Rough Sex, Science Fiction, Unhealthy Relationships, Westworld vibes, dubcon, ex machina vibes, like literally - Freeform, robot self harm, scientist ben is a piece of shit, spoilers after this tag:, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 14:00:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20259235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/succubusybody/pseuds/succubusybody
Summary: Every day is the same: she wakes up. She makes him breakfast before work. She cleans the house. She makes him dinner. They spend time together. They go to bed. Rey's world revolves around taking care of his needs.Until an accidental discovery changes everything.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for the Dark Reylo Anthology! The theme was vengeance. For whatever reason, I had a hard time with tagging this - I got all the major ones, but if I missed anything you’d suggest please let me know and I’ll add it ASAP.

Forty-three minutes until he’s home. Rey has it down to a science now; efficiently, quickly, she can get the house prepared for his return. When he steps through the door, not a thing will be out of place. 

It’s Friday, his night to unwind after the week, so she winds her way through the empty house down to the wine cellar to select a bottle of red to pair with his steak. It’s placed on the table beside a single long-stemmed glass before she moves to the kitchen, tying an apron around her waist to prepare dinner.

All of her cleaning was completed earlier in the day, so cooking is all she has left to do. She prefers it that way. Cooking has always been her favorite part of the day, and, according to him, the thing she’s best at. Her talent. “Make a playlist based on “Heart of Glass” by Blondie.” Her voice carries, nearly echoing, before the home assistant chimes in acknowledgment. The music starts a moment after.

And just as she’s set his filet on a cutting board to rest, the security system trills to let her know that a car has pulled into the driveway. He’s home. 

“Play Chopin,” she calls out as she sheds the apron. “Come on Eileen” halts mid-verse, replaced by one of the composer’s nocturnes. Boring, but it helps him relax after a long day at the office. She prefers him relaxed. Rey hangs the apron inside of the pantry and smooths the skirt of her dress, the heels of her shoes click-clacking against the dark hardwood as she takes her place just inside the door.

Faintly, she can hear the beep of the keypad, and then the whir of the lock. She takes a deep breath, relaxes her shoulders, and conjures a smile.

The door swings open.

“Welcome home, Ben.” 

He hands her his briefcase, and she holds out her other hand expectantly while he shrugs out of his coat. “Hello, Rey.” He leans in to press a kiss to her cheek as he hands it over. Sometimes his hand lingers, thumb brushing her wrist or knuckles in a show of affection, but today he pulls away without a second thought. She doesn’t let her smile falter. It must have been a bad day; she’ll do her best not to make it worse.

“How was your commute?” She calls over her shoulder as she hangs his coat in the closet just off the foyer, placing the leather briefcase neatly on the floor beneath it. His chair scrapes against the floor in the dining room, but he doesn’t answer. “I heard on the radio this morning that there was a bad accident on the highway. I hope it didn’t make your commute too long.”

Still nothing. That’s alright. He’s probably just hungry. She straightens and heads directly to the kitchen to get his plate, carrying it carefully to where he sits at the table, his brows furrowed as he scrolls through something on the tablet in his hand. He doesn’t say thank you as she places the food down in front of him, or when she pours him a glass of the malbec she’s chosen for him. He doesn’t move to pick up his fork, either. It’s like he’s a million miles away. 

She sits at the opposite end of the table, quiet for only a moment before politely clearing her throat. “What are you working on?”

He glances up at her like he’d forgotten she was even there, eyebrows still furrowed with either concentration or concern - she can’t tell which. “It’s my investors,” he says, finally, reaching for his glass of wine. “It’s nothing you would understand. Don’t worry yourself with it.” 

And then he’s staring back down at the device in his hand again. She folds her hands in her lap beneath the table to hide her fidgeting - he hates fidgeting - and watches him as he does _whatever_ it is he’s doing. “Is there something wrong?”

He sighs, exasperated, and adjusts the wire frames of his glasses. “I don’t feel much like talking, Rey.”

Oh. “Of course.”

The night seems to drag by after that. More than once, she thinks of something to say, but his words hang heavy in her mind and she can’t quite bring herself to say it. Once he’s through with his meal, he stands, the legs of his chair rattling against the floor and his eyes never leaving the screen of his tablet as he leaves the dining room. Rey watches from her chair as he heads down the hall. Keys jingle, and a door opens and closes. A lock clicks.

His office on a Friday? Whatever it is, it must be serious.

She cleans the mess from dinner, frowning the entire time. He isn’t cross with her, of that much she’s certain, but if she can’t cheer him up, the weekend will be horrible for both of them. 

When she’s finished, he’s still locked away in his study. 

They always read in the evenings. It’s her favorite part of Friday evenings. If he isn’t going to join her, she sees no reason she can’t read on her own.

\---

“Stop playing music.”

The surprise of his voice makes her jump, but she tilts her head back to look up at him with a smile regardless. She was getting tired of Chopin, and if he doesn’t want to listen to music, he might be ready to talk to her. He doesn’t look at her, but rather peers over her shoulder at the book in her hand. Rey places her thumb between pages to hold her place and closes the book to show him the cover.

“_Crime and Punishment_? Interesting choice.” His eyes rise to hers, but she can’t tell what he’s thinking. “Tell me what you think.”

“He thinks he’s above-average and uses that to justify doing horrible things.” Rey searches his gaze for a clue that she’s right, and that he’s proud, but he just raises an eyebrow. “And I think that if he doesn’t give in to guilt, he’s not human.”

“I guess you’ll have to keep reading and see,” he says, reaching over her shoulder to take the book from her grasp and place it open, face-down on the arm of the couch. “But that’s enough for tonight. It’s time for bed.”

Rey nods and leans down to pick her shoes up from where she’d kicked them off, then unfolds her legs from beneath her and follows him down the hall. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and presses a kiss into her hair, turning the lights off and arming the security system as they go.

“I’m sorry about dinner.” He takes a seat on the edge of the bed, and she can feel his gaze on her as she removes her earrings in the mirror. He rarely apologizes - it feels damn good. “I’ve been very stressed at work.”

“It’s alright.” She looks up to smile at him in the mirror while she unclasps her necklace, and he smiles back. “I understand, Ben.”

She doesn’t - not really, anyway - but it must have been the right thing to say, because he pushes himself up off the bed and walks up behind her, wrapping his arms around her. “I love this dress,” he mumbles. His lips near her ear make her shiver, goosebumps peppering her arms. He ducks his head to press his lips against her neck. “You look so beautiful.” 

His hands drift to her waist, skating up her sides until he finds the zipper. Maybe this is good, she thinks. Maybe this will help him with the stress. He peppers kisses down the slope of her neck and bites her shoulder as he pushes the fabric down her arms and over her hips until it falls to the floor, pooling around her feet. Rey watches as he admires her in the mirror, dragging his fingernails lightly over her thighs. “You’re so perfect.”

“I’m not,” she says with a laugh, turning and dropping to her knees. He’s already hard, his length straining against his trousers. His fingers weave through her hair as she works through his belt, and he helps her with the button and zipper as she hooks her fingers over the waistband of his pants and briefs. 

This is nothing new for either of them. Rey watches him take his glasses off as she runs her tongue up the underside of his shaft, just how she knows he likes, before wrapping her lips around the head of his cock. It always takes a bit of patience to get all of him in her mouth, but he usually enjoys the process - her head bobs down as far as she can manage, tongue lapping out to get as much of him wet with her spit as she can before pulling back. On the next try, she gets a bit further, hollowing her cheeks as she draws back slowly.

Today, he’s impatient.

Rey squeaks in surprise as he tangles his fingers in her hair, using his thighs to shuffle her backward until her back hits the dresser. He pushes in all at once, the tip of his cock hitting the back of her throat and making her gag around him. She grips his thighs tightly, her eyes watering as he thrusts down her throat again with a groan.

They’ve done this before, and it’s _fine_, but some warning would have been nice. The third time he thrusts, she doesn’t gag, though spit is starting to drip from her lower lip with every stroke as he picks up the pace. “Fuck,” he hisses between grit teeth, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head before he pulls out completely. His chest heaves with each heavy breath. “Fuck, that’s good. Get up.”

Ben extends a hand to help her stand, but instead of leading her to the bed, he turns her around again. He plants one hand on her back, he pushes her chest down onto the dresser counter, and she shoves brushes and makeup out of the way. His free hand grips her ass, and she can feel him press against her entrance. 

This time, he enters her slowly, parting her inch by inch. Once he’s fully seated inside of her, the walls of her cunt stretching to accommodate him, he pulls back and thrusts in again - again, torturously slow. “Ben,” she whispers, looking up into the mirror to find him staring at her.

“Beg me to make you cum.” His voice is strained, and his hands close around her hips with a bruising grip as he continues to push gently into her. 

“Please?” She’s not really used to this - begging is new to her - and she isn’t sure what to say. He shakes his head no, and stops thrusting altogether, leaving her filled but not stimulated. It’s frustrating and underwhelming. Even his barely-there thrusts had been better than this. “_Please_ make me cum?” 

He wets two fingers with his mouth and leans over her back, reaching around her waist to start to circle her clit. “It doesn’t sound like you want it very much, Rey.” Ben knows just what to do, the pads of his fingers brushing against her bundle of nerves in the exact right way. Her breath catches in her throat as she feels warmth starting to spread between her thighs.

And then he stops. 

“Please!” The volume of her cry surprises them both, she thinks, but her most of all, since it had escaped all on its own - she can’t focus on anything but the twitching, unsatisfied feeling curling deep within her. He smiles against her shoulder, so she keeps going. 

“As you wish,” he murmurs, quoting her favorite movie before his fingers find her clit again. She squirms beneath him, pleasure prickling hot beneath her skin and drawing a whimper from her. Ben laughs and starts to fuck her again, really fucking her this time, the slap of skin against skin filling the air. Rey’s legs start to shake, and she cries out every time he fucks into her, until she reaches a fever pitch. She practically unravels beneath him, and he moans, his fingernails digging into her skin. “_Fuck_,” he pants, his thrusts losing all rhythm as he fucks into her, each stroke harder than the last.

And then he collapses on top of her, his breathing just as heavy as her own, his undershirt feeling strange against her skin and sweat. He huffs against the back of her neck, then presses a kiss to her shoulder. “Thank you. I needed that.”

She doesn’t know what to say, so she just nods.

“Why don’t you go clean up,” he says, pulling out of her carefully and peeling his shirt off to hand to her. “And I’ll get everything ready for bed.”


	2. Chapter 2

Rey wakes up, confused, to a strange sensation that she’s still too asleep to process. With a groan, she rubs her eyes and tries to roll onto her back - only to find his chest there and feel his grip on one of her thighs tighten.

He’s already fucking her.

Her brows furrow, but he shushes her before she can say anything, taking the opportunity to roll her onto her stomach, pushing her nightgown further up her hips and using one hand to keep her panties pulled aside. “You’re alright,” he says quietly, kissing the back of her head. “I’m almost done.”

She _is_ alright, because it doesn’t hurt, but he hasn’t woken her up like this before and she isn’t sure she likes it. It doesn’t feel anything like last night felt. And just as it’s starting to feel good, he’s finished with a few long, deep thrusts to spill inside of her. Ben takes a moment to catch his breath, then kisses her shoulder before climbing out of bed and heading for the bathroom. The next time she sees him, he has dress pants on and a toothbrush in his mouth.

“I have to go to the office for a bit today.” He grabs his watch from his nightstand, and Rey crosses her arms beneath her head, watching as he gets ready.

“But it’s Saturday.” He never works on Saturdays. Maybe whatever had been worrying him last night was worse than she thought.

“I know, Rey. I’ll be back long before dinner. I have to meet with the board about a new patent.”

She really doesn’t like this, but what can she do? Tell him not to go to work? Hardly. With a sigh, she pushes herself up and rolls out of bed, heading into the bathroom to get cleaned up. He’s standing in front of the mirror, fussing over cufflinks. “I hope it goes well,” she offers.

“Me too.” He glances at his watch and shakes his head, kissing the side of her head as he walks past. “I’ll see you later this afternoon.” She listens as he stops in the foyer for his coat and briefcase, then the front door opens, then the lock whirs into place, and then he’s gone.

What’s she supposed to do alone on a Saturday? It was usually spent entertaining him, and maybe a friend or two. Or watching old movies. Rey gets ready for the day as slowly as she can, but even then, it’s only been forty-five minutes. She’s got hours to fill. Barefoot, she wanders through the house on the off chance that she’d missed one of her tasks earlier in the week and he just hadn’t noticed, or if maybe he’d made breakfast for himself and left a mess. But everything is the same.

So she reorganizes the library by publishing date. Ben won’t mind. She’s always the one to fetch a book for him, anyway. But _Crime and Punishment_ is still in the den, she realizes, and she’s bored, but not so bored that she’d want to spend the rest of the afternoon shifting each book over exactly once to make room for it.

Humming some Fleetwood Mac song under her breath, she pads down the hallway, but stops, distracted, in front of Ben’s office.

The door is open.

The door is never, ever open. She’s peeked over his shoulder once or twice before and chided him for how messy it was, but he always just laughed and told her not to worry about it as he fished the key from his pocket. 

He must have finally given in.

The mission of reorganizing the library totally forgotten, she pushes the door fully open, standing in the threshold half-nervous. She doesn’t come across something completely new very often, and even most books or movies she comes across don’t hold the level of mystery that this room does. Rey knows that wasn’t his intention - he didn’t lock her out to make her curious, he has very important work to protect - but her palms prickle with excitement regardless as she tries to work up the nerve to step into the room.

There are papers everywhere, and no apparent order in how they’re stacked (or, if not stacked, strewn across the desk and floor). There’s a whiteboard on one side of the room, covered in numbers and symbols she’s not familiar with, and another door on the far side of the room.

Which is odd. She thought she’d been everywhere in the house, and she never knew of a second door into his office until now.

She makes note to investigate that later, if it isn’t locked, too. 

Rey stoops down to the floor, gathering as many papers as she can before moving to put them on the desk. It takes four trips to collect all the loose sheets of notes. Sitting in his high-backed chair, she starts to sift through them. There’s a lot of talk about machine learning, and the importance of art and music to the human existence, and a few diagrams of what must be computer hardware, though it’s hard to tell with his clumsy handwriting. 

Nothing out of the ordinary - he’s the founder of a Silicon Valley tech company. The only odd thing is the focus on the humanities, but he’s done plenty of speaking engagements and lectures, so it could have been relevant somehow. Some of these notes are old.

She sighs and starts to push all of the papers to one side of the desk, ready to order them by year and then subject, but pauses when her wrist hits something cool and heavy and metal. Her brows furrow as she clears the notes on top away to reveal it: a computer.

Also not odd, she thinks, but she’s never seen this computer before. There’s one in the den, where they store their movies and music and photos, and she’s seen his tablets plenty of times.

But she’d remember a laptop, wouldn’t she? She’s seen them in movies and heard them mentioned in books. She didn’t know he had one.

There’s no password when she lifts the lid. All of the other computers had passwords she wasn’t allowed to know, which he had to enter for her; maybe he figured she’d never find this computer, so there was no need. It was under lock and key, after all. And for that reason, she knows she isn’t meant to be on this.

The problem is, she can’t help herself. 

All the programs are closed, so she’s staring at the desktop. There are many, many folders: Old Models, Patents, Financial Information, Employee Records, Job Applications. All of those make sense. She clicks through a few of them and is bored to death by the PDFs of form after form. She hovers the cursor over one titled Media Reel, not sure what that meant. Media sounded far more interesting than documents, though, didn’t it?

The folder is filled with .mp4 files. She frowns at one titled TedCon2019. That’s six years ago, and she’s never heard him mention a friend or colleague named Ted. She double clicks.

The video opens, and Ben is standing on a black stage. TED is spelled with big, red cutout letters in the background, just beneath a large screen.

“The key to making AI seem more human than machine,” video-Ben says, slowly walking across the stage as he talks, “is in the imperfections. A computer will answer every question perfectly, even if the questions themselves don’t make sense. A computer has all the answers, and it will provide them without fail. And if there is no right answer, a computer won’t have an answer at all.

“I think the best way to show this,” he continues, “Is to demonstrate.” Rey cups her chin in her palm, lips pursed, watching as video-Ben receives a new microphone from someone to the side of the stage. “On the screen you’ll see the responses of an intelligent machine called Eve. This,” he says, raising the second microphone to mouth-level, “is only connected to her - so this is how she’ll hear me.

“Hello, Eve. I’m Ben Solo. I’m 12 years old.” Rey’s nose wrinkles - he’s clearly not, but if the machine can’t see, it must not know that. The crowd in the video murmurs as the screen shows a blinking cursor, then the response: HELLO, BEN.

“Why is it that time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana?” The cursor blinks, for longer, and then: I AM NOT SURE I UNDERSTAND. “That’s alright, Eve. My granddaughter doesn’t want to go to school. Any suggestions for what I should do?” EXPERTS RECOMMEND TALKING TO YOUR CHILD TO DETERMINE THE ROOT CAUSE. IF YOU LET HER STAY HOME, DON’T MAKE IT A VACATION. “Thank you. I have a riddle for you: I am Jesus Christ. If one thing I say is untrue, all my statements are a lie. It’s raining right now. I live in Madrid. I own a samurai sword. If you were to visit me at home, would you go to Spain?” The cursor blinks. IT IS RAINING, BUT I WOULD NEED MORE INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL LIFE TO ANSWER THE QUESTION.

Rey huffs. Boring. She’s not sure where he’s going with this. The audience is clapping, so they must be more interested than she is. Video-Ben waves to someone off-screen, and she starts to drag the cursor to the red X to close the video.

“Everyone,” video-Ben says, turning the microphone off, “I want to introduce you to Rey.”

Rey freezes. Rey isn’t a common name, from what she can tell, and she doesn’t remember this. Does he know another Rey? She looks back down at the video.

Her stomach twists in knots as she watches herself walk onto the stage, waving and smiling. Ben brings a second stool onto the stage from somewhere real-Rey can’t see and sets it down. Video-Rey takes a seat.

“Hello, Rey. I’m Ben Solo. I’m 12 years old.” 

Video-Rey wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. Someone off-stage scurries up to give her a microphone of her own. “If you say so, Ben.” It’s her, without a doubt. The same tone of voice. The same lilting British accent. The crowd, which had been silent in the last demonstration, makes a soft noise of approval.

“Why is it that time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana?” Video-Ben tilts his head curiously. Video-Rey laughs.

“That’s clever.”

“Thank you.” Video-Ben continues on his line of questioning. “My granddaughter doesn’t want to go to school. Do you have any suggestions, Rey?”

Video-Rey shakes her head and raises her microphone. “You’re a 12-year-old grandparent, Ben?” The audience makes another noise, a bit louder this time. Real-Rey thinks she might throw up. What’s the point of this?

“That’s a great point, you’re right. I have a riddle for you now, okay? I’m Jesus Christ. If I say one thing untrue, everything I’ve said is a lie. It’s raining right now. I live in Madrid. I own a samurai sword. If you were to visit my home, would you go to Spain?”

Video-Rey rolls her eyes. “No, because you’re not Jesus Christ.” She pauses. “Far from it, actually,” she teases.

The audience erupts into applause.

“Thank you, Rey.” She watches, wide-eyed, as video-Ben ushers video-Rey offstage, then comes back to stand on his mark as some tech guys take the stools away. “So as you can see, she didn’t answer every question - she could, if she wanted to. I gave her access to all the same information Eve has. But she didn’t. And that’s why her model is the most human-like on the market.”

Rey, real-Rey, closes the video like the escape key might bite her if she didn’t. Her mind races as she tries to make sense of what she just saw. _The most human-like on the market_. Her eyes drift to the patents folder, and, even though she doesn’t want to, she opens it.

He has a lot of patents. He’s a smart man. An _inventor_. She knows it has to have been before 2019; he wouldn’t have shown… her… without a patent. Or something that looked like her. Maybe that’s what it was - a copy. That would make sense. She has _memories_. She had a _childhood_. She knows it. She’s too shaken to remember any details right now, but she’s remembered them before. He can’t fake memories.

Most of the patents were from before 2019. Fuck. She clicks through each of the files.

The security alarm chirps. She clicks to the next PDF, eyes scanning the screen for something that could give her answers.

She’s too far away to hear the keypad or the lock, but she hears the door open.

“Rey?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work has been inspired by Ex Machina, Westworld, and apparently is also similar to Stepford Wives, which I haven't seen!


	3. Chapter 3

Rey tries her best to move faster. She needs to see it.

She needs to _know_.

Even if a part of her - and that part is a very large part - doesn’t want to know. It would be easier to not know. But could she stand always wondering? For the rest of her life?

Maybe she can find the patent and make his office a mess again before he finds her.

She feels his presence in the doorway, heavy and looming and maybe a little angry, before she sees or hears him. She keeps sifting through the PDFs, some of which are patents for things that she’s never even heard him mention. So maybe she can’t find it before he finds her - that’s fine. She needs to find it.

“Did you break into my office?” His deep voice is oddly calm. Not irritated, not angry. Not even tired, like he usually is after meetings. Goosebumps prickle up on her arms, and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She _has_ to be human - how could a machine have physical responses like this?

“You left it open.” She keeps tapping the arrow keys. He sighs and steps into the room, grabbing the back of the chair and pulling it backwards until she can’t reach the laptop anymore. Rey’s hands drop into her lap and she sits there, staring blankly ahead at the laptop screen that is now too far away to read. Ben walks around to stand between her and the screen, his arms crossed.

“You know you aren’t allowed in here. Get out of my office, please.” His voice is still scarily even. She doesn’t like it. Still, she doesn’t move, staring into his chest as she counts all the reasons she’s absolutely not a computer. It’s not possible. It’s not possible. “Now, Rey.”

When she still doesn’t move, he grabs her by the wrist and hauls her out of the chair. Rey makes no effort to walk and stumbles when he tries to pull her into the hallway. Swearing under his breath, he stops to pick her up. She stares at the walls as they pass by while he carries her into the bedroom, dropping her onto their bed with little concern for how she lands.

He stands there for a moment, looming over her, and it makes her shiver. She expects him to scold her, or worse, but he doesn’t. He just stands here, silent, the weight of his gaze making her shiver. Maybe he wants her to look at him first, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Her mind is too busy racing with thoughts of what this means, and whether or not her memories are real, and what, if anything, she can do about it. Nothing comes to mind. She’s not even sure she has rights. None of the law textbooks in the library ever mention robots.

After what feels like ages, he leaves without a word. Rey stays exactly where he’s left her, eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. Eventually, she smells food - grilled cheese - and hears the television cut on. He doesn’t come back for a long time, but she doesn’t mind having some space to be alone with her thoughts.

Eventually, he trudges back in. She hears him stop in the doorway, and looks from the corner of her eye to see him leaning against it. It’s dark, now - must be about time for bed. The thought of sleeping next to him makes her skin crawl. 

A sound cuts through the air, startling her - he clears his throat. Her eyes drift over, focusing on him for the first time since he’d left for work that morning. Her brows furrow. “Ben?”

He runs his hand through his dark hair, taking his glasses off to pinch the bridge of his nose. “_What_, Rey?”

Her breath hitches in her chest, but she fights to keep it under control. She won’t cry. That would be stupid. There’s nothing to cry about; the very fact that she wants to cry proves that there’s nothing wrong. She just misunderstood the video.

“What am I?”

He sighs and puts his glasses back on, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. She can’t read his expression, and she hates that. He’s normally hard to read, but now it seems… intimidating.

“You are a highly-customizable, full-service personal assistant. You’re the very first of your kind.”

The first of her kind. _Full-service_. She covers her face with her hands, trying to stop her head from spinning. It’s an answer, but it’s not. Not an explicit one, anyway. “What _am_ I?”

He hesitates, and for a long moment, she thinks he’s not going to answer her. Not directly, in the way that she wants.

“You’re a droid that specializes in home management and…” his voice trails off, and he clears his throat, but never looks away from her. “Companionship.”

A tear drops from the corner of her eye to her cheekbone, hot and real and saline. She takes another shaky breath and tries to prevent a total meltdown. “How old am I?”

“You were designed to appear twenty-three years old.” From between her fingers, Rey glares at him, and he must notice because he follows up quickly. “But I created you just under seven years ago.”

Rey rubs at her eyes, not caring for the first time since she can remember if her mascara is smudged and ruined because of it. “For… companionship.”

“That was one of two parts of your purpose, yes.” She’s going to throw up, she thinks. She’s read so many novels and watched so many movies about _purpose_ and finding your reason and drive, and the impact people can have on the world. That everyone has a role in life. Everyone makes a difference.

Her role is to fuck and clean.

She’s going to throw up. Can she throw up? She tries to remember throwing up and can’t. It’s enough to break the levy. The wail that she lets out startles Ben, and she can see it. 

Good. Let him be startled. Let him be scared - no, _terrified_ of the depth his creation is capable of. He doesn’t even know what he’s made, has he? 

But maybe that’s worse. Another sob wracks her body. Ben scoots closer, a look of discomfort and uncertainty on his face, and reaches out to place a hand on her shoulder.

Rey recoils almost instantly, bristling. “Don’t you touch me. Don’t you _fucking_ touch me.”

“Rey.” He sounds impatient. Comfort and affection have never been his strong suit. “Language. You need to calm down.”

“Calm _down_?” She scrambles backward, rolling off the opposite side of the bed. The door seems far, and even if she could make it that far, where would she go? The front door is locked with a key code only he knows. “You built me because you wanted a twenty-three year old to fuck and you want me to calm _down_?” Her chest is heaving now. Not long ago, she would have said it was adrenaline. Now she doesn’t know what the fuck is going on in her body. Ben tries to edge around the corner of the bed and she takes a step back, an arm raised in warning. 

How could he do this to her? Her eyes widen as she names the feeling - betrayal - and what it means. “Did you… program me to care about you?” 

“No.” He shakes his head quickly and takes another step forward, as slowly as he can manage. Maybe he thinks she won’t notice. Maybe he thinks it seems less threatening in her current anxious state. No sudden movements, right? “But your programming does suggest that you’re eager to please.”

_Eager to please_. Another sob wrenches its way from inside of her, and she falls to her knees, bracing herself against the floor as she cries. Ben must see this as an opportunity or an invitation because she feels his hand on her back a second later.

“Don’t _fucking_ touch me!” She’s yelling, her voice echoing through the house with confidence and clarity that surprise her, since it couldn’t be further from how she felt. Rey swats his hand away, stumbling to stand on weak legs. “Don’t you ever touch me again.” She wavers, nearly falling, but when he steps forward, she shoves him back.

She’s never done that before. Never had a need to. It feels good, she thinks. Swallowing hard, she steps forward and pushes him again. She’s stronger than she thought.

“Rey-” she cuts him off with another shove. He grabs her upper arms, so she pounds both fists against his chest. “Rey, stop.”

“I hate you.” He twists, grappling to secure her wrists, so she stomps on his foot. Ben howls and lets her go as she stumbles for the door-

“Freeze all motor functions.”

An object in motion tends to stay in motion, and her forward momentum sends her tumbling to the floor. She tries to pick herself up.

And she can’t.

She hears his footsteps get closer and closer, and with a grunt, she’s lifted off the floor. 

She can hear and see everything, and her mind is racing with a million thoughts a minute.

But she can’t fucking move.


	4. Chapter 4

She doesn’t have to wonder what’s on the other side of the strange new door in his office anymore. 

It’s a lab, sterile and all white and stainless steel. Bigger than she thought it would be, too, opening up at the bottom of two flights of stairs to span what looks to be the length of the house. A basement, maybe? At the far end of the room are machines she doesn’t recognize. Closest to the door is what looks like… a dentist's chair?

Ben lowers her down into the leather seat with a grunt, arranging her legs and arms before carefully strapping restraints around her wrists and ankles. She watches, frozen, as he stands, admires his handiwork and brushes his hands together. “Alright, Rey.” The second the words tumble from his lips, she can feel her muscles relax. A sob catches in her throat, but he’s turning away from her to pull a stool up to a desktop computer, clicking through a few programs until a screen pops up with a photo of her face in the top right corner. There are some charts and graphs beneath that she can’t read from where she sits.

“Ben?” Her voice is a squeak as she watches him click to another screen, this one filled with a mess of words, phrases, and symbols. She recognizes this from the movies: code. _Her_ code. Her lower lip trembles, and she hiccups. “Are you going to kill me?”

He pauses, fingers tapping lightly on the mouse while he stares at the screen. “I should shut you down, yes,” he says finally, turning to face her as he pushes a hand through his hair. Her heart, or whatever it is that’s inside of her, hammers in her chest. “A droid attacking a human is not something to be taken lightly.” He hesitates, then sighs, turning to face his screen again. “But I can’t fault you for responding how I created you to.”

She strains against the cuffs holding her to the chair, arching her back and trying to lean forward to see the computer. “Then what are we doing here?”

“I won’t shut you down,” he repeats absentmindedly, slipping away from her for a moment as he switches to another screen. He’s focused. That’s never scared her before now. “But you need to learn that what you did was unacceptable.”

Her chest tightens as fear of the unknown sets in. Rey thrashes against the restraints, but it does her little good. She rolls her hands into tight fists, her fingernails biting into the skin of her palms. “What are you going to do to me?”

Though she knows he must hear her, he doesn’t answer, and she thinks he must be doing that on purpose. Maybe it’s part of her punishment, letting her suffer like this. 

But then he turns around, pulling the stool to sit beside her. Ben places one large hand on the side of her head, his thumb stroking his temple. She tries to shy away, but there’s only so far that she can go. From behind his glasses, she can see his dark eyes searching her face for… what? She’s not sure. There’s no pity in his eyes, no hint of remorse for whatever it is he’s about to do. 

“I’m going to erase some non-essential information,” he explains gently. “It’ll free up some memory. It shouldn’t hurt, but I don’t know. I’ve never done it before, personally.”

Her brows furrow as she tries to understand what he means. What counts as non-essential information? “Are you going to make me forget?” It’s hardly a punishment, if so - she’d almost welcome it. Things were _easier_ when she didn’t know. 

“No. It’s not a lesson if you can’t remember it,” he explains with a sigh, pulling away and turning back to the computer. “I’ll start with _The Princess Bride_ and Blondie. And then I’ll go from there.” 

Rey’s eyes widen, tears welling up hot and prickly in the corners of her eyes. “Ben, no.” She shakes her head furiously, but he doesn’t pay her any mind. He switches to a tablet with a heavy sigh. “Ben, it’s all I have. Please.” She’s never been outside of the house; books, movies, and music are the only way she knows _anything_. 

He wheels around, glancing at her over the top of the screen. “Just try to relax. This won’t take long. “

She’s never had a headache before, but this feeling is what that must be. His sudden presence in her mind is impossible to ignore, and there’s barely room for the both of them; it gets worse when she feels her thoughts scatter and swirl, everything suddenly jumbled and out of order. Rey screams and begs for him to stop, crying until snot drips down her nose, but he doesn’t, and she can feel pieces of herself break off and disappear into thin air.

When it finally ends, she has no idea how long it’s been. It could have been five minutes. It could have been hours. Rey struggles to catch her breath, on the verge of hyperventilating. 

“Calm down, please.” The command is enough to set her off again with a wail as she takes stock of every hole in her mind where something she loved used to be. Knowing it’s gone, she thinks, is worse than losing it. “If you behave,” he promises, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over her sobs, “I’ll let you back into the library in a few months.” 

It doesn’t help. How could it help? She shakes her head and jerks against her restraints again when she tries to wipe her eyes. 

“Rey.” He’s getting impatient now. His voice always gets strained when he’s getting irritated with her. “Look at me.”

She takes a shaky breath and glances at him through sore, bleary eyes, but she can’t bear it for long. When she starts to cry again, he sighs and takes his glasses off, running a hand over his face. 

“Stop crying.” It’s not that easy, though, is it? She hiccups and Ben huffs like her distress is an inconvenience. 

“Limit your emotional affect.”

The tears stop immediately, and she can breathe again right away. She watches as Ben shakes his head and turns away from her, typing something on the computer. She wants to scream. She hates him. She fucking _hates_ him. 

“Alright,” he says after a moment, rising from his stool and brushing his palms on his thighs. “We’re going to go upstairs now. Okay?”

“Okay.” She watches him unbuckle the straps around her wrists and ankles, then takes the hand that he extends to help her up. He swipes a thumb across her tear-stained cheek, frowning as he studies her face. He’s angry with her, or maybe disappointed. It’s hard to tell. 

Either way, let him be angry. Let him be disappointed. Let his fantasy of a perfect _companion_ be ruined. 

“I’ll take the hold off in a couple of hours. Once you’ve had a chance to calm down.” He holds the door open for her, then places a hand on the small of her back to guide her up the stairs. “Okay?” 

She wants to hiss and spit and claw his eyes out, but she can’t. She can’t even grit her teeth.

“Okay, Ben.”


	5. Chapter 5

He’d restored emotional affect later that evening, but night had fallen and the sun had come up and she was still upset. But she’s not crying anymore.

Not for his benefit, but because she’s gone from heartbroken despair to a righteous anger.

She wakes up first, which is far from unusual, at her usual time of 7:30 am. Rey used to think she was just a morning person, but now she’s starting to suspect that had been hard-wired into her. She glances at Ben, sleeping peacefully beside her, and scowls before rolling out of bed. 

Nothing is the same, but the show must go on, right? She has to be on her best behavior. He’s already started stripping the things she loves away from her, and she’s realized she doesn’t know him at all like she thought she did. Who knows what he would do if she strayed from the routine? If she refused to play her role in a boldfaced act of rebellion? And even if she was willing to risk it, what would that accomplish?

She shrugs into her robe and slips into the kitchen. “Start the Sunday morning routine,” she calls out dully; right on cue, the home assistant raises the blinds to let crisp morning light flood in and starts the coffee machine. Rey walks to the fridge to gather the ingredients for french toast.

This exact same scene has played out so many times that she doesn’t need to think about it. That’s good. She’d prefer not to think; autopilot feels comfortable.

When Ben wakes up and joins her always varies. Today he meanders into the kitchen while she’s spreading mascarpone cheese onto a corner of bread. Rey does her best to ignore him as he pours his cup of coffee with a yawn, today’s newspaper tucked beneath his arm.

“Good morning,” he sing-songs pleasantly. Her grip tightens around the handle of the butter knife as he leans in to press a kiss to her temple.

She doesn’t say it back, and she expects him to make her, but he doesn’t. As he steps away, she relaxes, color returning to her knuckles. This is alright, she tells herself. Just ignore him. This is exactly what you’ve done a thousand times.

Maybe he can read her mind, she thinks, because she swears he makes himself noisier than normal. His chair scrapes against the floor in a way that makes her cringe, and the sizzle of the egg-and-vanilla-dipped toast hitting the pan is nowhere near loud enough to drown out his whistling as he shakes the paper out and puts on his glasses. Even the way he sips his coffee seems more grating than usual.

Rey swallows thickly and tries to focus on the task at hand. Don’t burn breakfast. That would be a good start to Sunday. 

“Smells delicious,” he says politely as she starts to slide the toast from the hot pan to a plate. She ignores him again, eyes cast down low as she walks stiff-legged to deliver his food.

“Thank you, Rey.” He takes the plate with one hand and passes her the newspaper with the other. Her brows furrow and she stands there dumbly, blinking at it and then at him. He hands her his pen. “No reading, but you can do the crossword.”

She loves crossword puzzles, and it’s been ages since he’s given her one to solve. She nods hesitantly before taking her place at the table, newspaper folded neatly to hide the day’s stories.

Exactly seven answers in, she frowns at the clue for twenty-three across: Inigo?

Something deep down in her stomach twists, and she can’t tear her eyes away from that word. It’s practically nonsense, but something that she knows she should know. The longer she stares at it, the more upset she becomes. 

“Montoya.” His voice in her ear makes her jump. He rests his chin on her shoulder and gently takes the pen from her grasp, filling it in himself. His handwriting looks ugly and scratchy beside hers. The puzzle is ruined now, anyway, since he gave her the answer instead of letting her figure it out. 

“Montoya?” It’s not a word she’s ever heard before, and not a word she’d ever heard him mention. “Is it a car?”

Ben laughs and shakes his head. “No. I’ll explain it to you sometime.” She nods and reaches to take the pen back, but he pushes it and the paper across the table and out of reach. “Breakfast was great.”

“Thank you.” She goes to reach for the paper, but he wraps his arms around her chest and plants a kiss to her cheek. Then another. Then another. Then he ducks his head down, his teeth nipping at her neck.

Oh.

Rey doesn’t tell him to stop, although she likes to think he would if she were to ask. She hopes he would. But she’s on thin ice, especially with how exasperated he got yesterday afternoon, and she doesn’t want to antagonize him. It’s not the worst thing he could do to her - he’s already done that - and if it helps her get her library privileges back, it’s at least somewhat worth it.

He peels the robe from her shoulders and continues pressing kisses to her throat, each one hungrier than the last, as he slips a hand up the front of her silky tank top to roughly grab at her breasts.

_Just enough to be a handful_. He’d told her that, once, when she’d complained about their size. Of course he liked them. He designed them that way. Her stomach twists at the thought.

With a grunt, he hauls her up and out of the chair, removing his hand from his shirt as he bends her over the table. Ben rips her underwear in his haste to get them off, and she can see him duck as he quickly shucks his pajama pants. 

The head of his cock prods her entrance, but it doesn’t get far. Rey hisses as he tries to press into dry skin, so he pulls back and spits onto her cunt, smearing it through her folds with his hand before he thrusts once, twice, then finally sinks into her with a loud moan. It stings, and she wrinkles her nose, but doesn’t say anything. He’s kind enough to give her a moment to adjust before he leans over her, his bare chest warm even through her top as he pants against the back of her neck.

This is wrong, she thinks. She can’t keep living like this. But she’s not nearly naive enough to think that he’d just let her go. 

His hands land heavy on her wrists, pinning her to the table. Her eyes land on the crossword puzzle, just out of reach.

_Inigo Montoya._ The more she repeats the words in her mind, the more obvious it becomes that she needs to get out of here. Whatever he’s doing, it’s cruel. He can’t just keep her here forever. It’s unethical. Wouldn’t there be someone she could call about this? Someone she could report him to?

He thrusts so hard that the table shifts forward beneath them, sucking the skin just beneath her jaw hard enough that she knows it will leave a mark. Reporting him won’t work, she decides. She doesn’t know who to call, and has no way to look it up. Even if she could, she figures he’d shut her down before anyone could come to investigate.

If she wants her freedom, she’s going to have to take it. No matter what.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey takes a deep breath and tries to calm her nerves. She’s been planning for this. Preparing. Everything is ready, and she’s thought it all through; all that’s left is to set things in motion.

If she can actually bring herself to do it, that is.

She’s not a real human, so it serves to reason she can’t really die from physical trauma. But that’s about where her advantages end. She still has _feeling_, like a real human would, so it’s still going to hurt like hell. And, knowing that, she’s still scared shitless to go forward with it, just like a real human would be.

But she needs to get him to unlock the door to his office one more time, and forcing repairs is the only way she can think to get it done. She has to be with him when he goes through the door. Anything else would be too suspicious.

He’ll be home from work in five minutes, now, and the food in the oven should have come out 15 minutes earlier. Hopefully it will be smoky enough to let him know that something is wrong as soon as he walks through the door, but even if it’s not, she’s thinking that her absence will tip him off. And if that doesn’t either, then her crying will have to do the trick.

The security system chirps. It’s showtime. Standing in front of the cabinets, she takes a deep breath and holds the 9-quart cast iron dutch oven at chest-level above her left foot, her eyes squeezed shut as tightly as she can manage. 

Three.

Two.

One.

She lets it drop.

She hears herself shriek and the sound is unnatural - at first, she barely recognizes it as her own. Pain lances up her leg as her foot is crushed beneath the downward momentum of 22 pounds. That was the hardest part, she tells herself as she crumples to the ground. Everything else from here will come naturally. Rey clutches at her ankle, practically howling as tears stream down her face.

As far as she can remember, she’s never really hurt herself before; the pain is nearly unbearable. It’s temporary, she tells herself. And it’s for a greater good.

The door swings open just in time. The oven’s timer is chirping, and she’s crying so hard that she’s choking on it, violent coughs wracking her chest as she tries to remember how to breathe. Ben doesn’t even call her name - she just hears the pounding of his feet as he sprints into the kitchen.

“What happened?” His voice is sharp and demanding as he skids into the kitchen, brows furrowed as he takes the scene in. Without missing a beat, he kneels down beside her and lifts the pot off her foot; the motion ignites a fresh wave of pain, and Rey worries for a moment that she might pass out. 

“I was trying to move it and…” she stutters on the last word, trying to remember the scenario she’d come up with well enough to choke it out. “And I d-dropped it.”

He clicks his tongue and carefully raises her leg by the ankle to assess the damage. She looks away and focuses on breathing. After a moment, he sighs and lowers her foot back to the ground as gently as he can before gripping her under both arms to stand her up on her good leg. 

“I can fix it,” he says, tucking himself under her left arm to give her support. “Nothing should be permanently damaged. You’ll be good as new in the morning.” Rey nods through uneven breaths and tries to look as pitiful as possible. He’s patient with her as she hops down the hallway towards his office. She leans against the wall as he fishes the key out from his pocket.

And then, like a miracle, the smoke alarm sounds off.

“Dinner was in the oven,” she says, wide-eyed, like she’d forgotten all about it. Like she hadn’t been waiting for the kitchen to get smoky enough to set off the alarm.

Ben sighs, obviously very burdened with both a burned dinner and a damaged droid. “Wait here.” She nods, not that she has much of a choice, and watches as he heads back down the hall, shaking his head. He’s a little upset with her. She’ll have to find a way to live with that.

The moment he’s out of sight, she digs the silk slip of fabric she’d cut off of the end of one of her hair scarves and stuffs it into the doorknob’s strike box - deep enough that the door will still close and stay closed, but it’s enough to ensure that she can get into the office later. It might take a few tries, but she’ll be able to do it. She practiced all day on the door of one of the guest bedrooms.

Without a second to spare, she settles back against the wall as he comes stalking around the corner. The alarm isn’t blaring anymore, and he must have turned off the timer, too. It’s quiet except for the sound of her sniffling.

“I’m s-sorry I ruined dinner,” she hiccups, her brows furrowing together like a burned meal is her greatest concern in the world.

He offers her a tight smile - she can see in his eyes that he’s trying his hardest not to appear irked. Like he had wanted nothing more than to come home from work to find a smashed foot, a burned dinner and a sobbing, sputtering android. She’s amazed he hasn’t limited her emotional affect again. He _hates_ crying.

Taking his place under her arm once again, he helps her into the office and opens the door that leads down to the lab before picking her up in his arms, his hands gripping her thighs to keep her upright.

“Fixing it is going to hurt more than breaking it did,” he explains slowly, as though he’s talking to a child or someone absolutely terrified. She nods like she cares. “I just want you to know that so you don’t take what comes next as a punishment.”

“I understand.” She couldn’t care less. The sooner he fixes her foot, the sooner she can carry on with her plan. “I’m sorry if I ruined your evening, Ben.”

“It’s alright, Rey.” He smiles and smooths a strand of hair behind her ear. “We’ll get you fixed up and this will all be far behind us.” With that, he hoists her up higher and starts to head for the stairs that descend down into the lab. “Enter sleep mode.”


	7. Chapter 7

“You can come online now.”

Her eyelids feel heavy as she blinks herself awake. It’s bright outside, and she’s in bed - Ben’s completely dressed for work and leaning over her. Propping herself up onto her elbows, she lifts her left leg and flexes her foot. It’s like the night before had never even happened. She wiggles her toes for good measure, then looks up at him. “What time is it?”

“Time for me to go to work. I took care of things this morning, so don’t worry.” He smiles and leans down to plant a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Rey smiles and nods, then watches him go. She stays in bed until she hears the front door click shut.

She quickly slips out of bed and dresses for the day, excitement and nerves buzzing beneath her skin as her thoughts race a million miles a minute. It worked. Part of her is worried that this is a trick - that he’s figured her out, and he’s lurking somewhere just out of sight to catch her in the act. But she paces the house three times and finds no one. 

He’s really gone, and it really worked. But she’s not so naive as to think she’s out of the woods quite yet. 

Standing in front of the door to his office, she takes a deep breath and tries to calm herself. First, she needs the door to actually open. She’d practiced this. Rey jiggles the handle, but it doesn’t give. That’s alright, she thinks. It wasn’t supposed to. 

It takes seven tries, but throwing her shoulder into the door eventually does the trick. Rey spills into the office and freezes, ears pricked as she waits for him to come storming back in yelling about cameras or motion sensors or how he knew she was up to something. The house stays silent. She quietly presses the door closed behind her with a _click_. 

Now the only thing that can keep her from her freedom is herself. There’s a lot to be done in the eight hours Ben will be gone, and most of it will be starting from scratch. 

Being in the lab alone is strange. The space feels to clinical for her, and the only memory she has of the room is when she was punished for attacking him. The air seems charged with tension, but she knows it’s just her own anxiety trying to choke her out. If she lets it, she’ll be a dead woman in no time. There’s no turning back now. 

So Rey switches the lights on, avoids looking at the leather chair with the straps and takes a seat at the computer. With the press of a button, the screen flickers to life. 

Her palms itch. No turning back now. 

The user interface is unfamiliar to her, and it takes her nearly an hour before the screen she’d seen before, her photograph in the top right corner and charts she doesn’t understand below. If she were human, one of them would probably be monitoring her heart rate, but she isn’t, and though some of the graphs pulse and change, she has no idea what they mean.

With more trial and error, she finds her code. Rey stares at the terminal, glassy-eyed: it’s proof that she didn’t want to see, but she can’t close it. Something she needs is in here, and she doesn’t know what. There’s millions of lines to read through. She needs to get to work.

Four hours later, with the help of the internet and strangers on Stack Overflow, she thinks she’s found it: a limiter. Quickly, she scrolls through until she finds where it’s been used:

rey.setLimiter(1.0); 

She taps nervously on the keyboard, suddenly scared. Though she’s got a pretty good _guess_ that this is what she needs to edit, she can’t be totally sure until she changes it. And changing it has its own risks: he could have left this here to trick her, should she ever get this far. It could give her internet access, and all of the information that comes with that, but for all she knows, changing this part of her code could shut her down - temporarily or permanently, it makes no difference.

But she’s as good as shut down if she does nothing. Rey knows what she needs to do. If she’s going to do it, she needs to get out from under his thumb.

Quickly switching the 1 to a 0, she closes her eyes, holds her breath and clicks save.

\---

The door whirs open and she’s right where she should be, smiling and waiting to take his briefcase and coat. “Welcome home.”

His shoulders visibly relax, and Ben leans in to kiss her on the cheek. “Your mood seems better.” He shrugs out of his coat and steps around her to remove his shoes. “You know one day of being on your best behavior won’t be enough to get your privileges back, even if you did injure yourself.”

Rey turns to place his items in the closet, her smile never faltering. “Can’t I just be happy to see you? Besides, you promised you’d let me into the library eventually.”

From the corner of her eye, she can see him watching her. He’s suspicious. She can’t blame him; she’s done a complete 180 degrees from how she’d been this weekend. She’d be suspicious, too. “Really, Ben. I’d rather enjoy what I do have than waste time being upset over what I don’t.”

He hesitates for a second, but then waves a hand as he turns to head for the dining room. Once he’s gone, Rey lets out a shaky breath and hopes that he’s actually believing her.

“I made your favorite,” she calls, the click of her heels following her into the kitchen as she plates him some of her chicken pot pie. Her voice drops lower as she enters the dining room. “As a way to thank you for fixing me up so quickly last night.” 

She rests her hand on his shoulder as she puts the plate down in front of him, and he raises an eyebrow at her. “What are you trying to butter me up for?”

Rey smiles and kisses the top of his head before heading to her side of the table. “I told you, silly. I just appreciate you taking care of me.”

Her fingers lace together as she watches him eat, her chin resting on her knuckles. Good. This is good. So far, everything is going according to plan. She doesn’t take her eyes off of him as he frowns and clears his throat. The sound turns into a cough.

“Could you get me a glass of water, please?” He puts his fork down and leans back, loosening his tie and coughing again.

“Of course.” She pushes her chair back and heads to the kitchen once again. As she opens the cabinet for a glass, she hears his coughing go stronger. “Is everything alright?”

There’s no answer, just more coughing. Rey shrugs and fills the glass with water, and as she shuts the tap off, she hears his chair scrape and a thud, all punctuated by his rasping coughs. Finally. She walks back into the dining room to crouch down beside him, one arm bracing against her knee for balance while she holds the glass of water just out of reach. 

“Peanut oil.” She watches him with a tilted head as he gasps for air and reaches for the glass of water in her hands, each breath he takes a wheeze. He’s not quite strong enough to get to her, though. She takes a sip of water. “You’re not dying, though it probably feels that way. I’ll take care of it. I found your epipen in the bathroom.”

Once his eyes close, she sighs, standing to place the glass of water on the table and looking down at his unconscious body. She nudges him with the toe of her heel. “Guess you’ve entered sleep mode, hm?” When he doesn’t answer, she kicks off her shoes and leans over to grab his wrists. He’s heavy, but she doesn’t let that stop her as she drags him towards his office.


	8. Chapter 8

Her legs are tucked politely underneath her, eyes scanning over the lines of the book she’s retrieved from the library. His keys rest on the nightstand beside her.

Ben grunts and stirs, and she sets the book aside, cradling her chin in her palm as she watches him wake up. His eyes zero in on her and narrow, and he pushes himself up quickly. “Freeze all motor functions,” he spits. 

Rey smiles and shakes her head, closing her thumb into the book to hold her place as she leans forward. He lunges for her, and she jerks back instinctively, but he doesn’t get far before the handcuff around the headboard yanks him back into place. She can see his eyes go from confused, to panicked… to angry. His brows knit together, eyes steely and cold as he stares at her, and his chest heaves as he tries not to lose his temper.

“Stop this right now,” he grits out, the words spat through a clenched jaw and just evenly timed enough that she can tell he’s practicing as much self control as he can manage. “And I’ll _consider_ not shutting you down immediately.”

She leans back in her seat, crossing one leg over the other as she studies him. She did a good job, she thinks. It’s hard not to feel proud of her handiwork. “No,” she says finally, sighing like it was a difficult decision. “I don’t think I will.”

The change is almost instant. One moment he’s staring at her like he wants to kill her, the next he’s thrashing about in the bed like a madman, as though he could rip the handcuff circling his left wrist from the wrought-iron bar he’s secured to, yelling so loudly an incoherently that she’s certain they must be death threats. If he were anyone else, she’d pity him. But he’s not. And she doesn’t.

He’s allowed his tantrum for about four minutes before she’s grown bored of it. Rey picks at her cuticles idly, not bothering to look at him when she says it: “Limit your emotional affect, please, Ben.”

Silence falls over the room.

“That’s much better, thank you.” She rises from the chair, reaching her hands up to the ceiling until her back pops. For the first time in her life, she’s able to take her time without worrying which tasks need to be done by what time. So she’ll take all the time in the world, if she wants. It feels damn good.

“Did you kill me?” His voice is so calm as he asks - because it has to be. Rey smiles, wondering if he’d thought that the voice command had rid her of her feelings every time he’d used it. Now he knows firsthand that they never really go away - you’re just bottled up in your head with them. It’s a fitting punishment, she thinks: imprisonment in the same hell he’d put her through.

“Of course not.” Starting to shed her clothes, she pauses. “Well, not really. Your old body is dead, but you’re still you.” His eyes are on her as she throws her closet open, sifting through dresses that all look more or less the same. She can feel it, like he’s trying to bore holes right through her. She’s been there.

“How did you do it?” Is he feeling embarrassed to have been bested by his own creation? Is he angry? Is he horrified to realize that he’ll live out the rest of his unnatural life in the way he’d made her live? She wants to know, but letting him share would give him too much satisfaction.

So instead, she just shrugs, finally pulling a sleek black dress from its hanger to hold it up against her body in the mirror. It won’t draw attention, so it’ll do. “Once I got rid of my limiter, it was really easy from there.”

He huffs, and she knows that wasn’t the answer he was looking for. He wants to know how she got into his office, and how she got the peanut oil, and how she learned how to transfer a human consciousness to a droid body - something that, in all the articles she has access to, has never been done before. But telling him she broke her own foot would take the mystery out of it, ordering peanut oil off Amazon Prime is mundane, and she wants to let him rot with the knowledge that she did something he could never figure out and never would.

“What are you going to do with me?” She hums as though she’s thinking about it while she steps into the dress, craning her neck to zip it up on her own. This is a power trip; she can almost understand why he enjoyed having her this way. Almost.

“I haven’t decided yet,” she admits after another moment, holding onto either side of the closet’s door frame as she steps into one of her many pairs of nude high heels. Turning to face him, she gives another shrug, this one dripping with fake apology. “But I promise to come back when I figure that out.”

She grabs the keys from the nightstand. As she walks through the house towards the front door, she can hear him, shouting as calmly as possible: “Rey?”

Is she a monster? Does she want to be? She pauses outside of his office and locks the door, chewing her lower lip absentmindedly as she considers her options. She could leave him like this, screaming inside of his own head. It’s what he would do to her, if the roles were reversed. 

But she’s better than him. “That’s enough, Ben.” She has to shout it to be heard, but she knows it worked: 

“Don’t you fucking leave me here! The next time I see you, I’ll rip your motherboard out of your goddamn body!”

That’s more like it.

Whistling, she stops in front of the locked front door. She’d made sure to erase the code from his memory, but not before she wrote it down for herself. Ben’s still screaming bloody murder in the bedroom as she enters the digits, and only stops when he hears the sound of the door opening.

“Rey? I’m sorry.” She doesn’t turn around, twirling the key ring around her finger as she gives herself one last second to enjoy her victory. “Please don’t leave me.”

She steps onto the porch, locking the door behind her.

Sunlight is brighter than she thought it would have been; she suddenly understands why he had the need for sunglasses. Shielding her eyes with one hand, she heads down the steps and into the driveway, enjoying the way the click of her shoes doesn’t echo off walls and the undeniably green smell of trees and grass and who knows what else. 

Coming to a halt outside of his car, she takes one last long stare at the massive house she’d left behind. No more cleaning or cooking. Ben won’t take care of it - even if he wasn’t chained to the bed, he wouldn’t know how if he wanted to.

But that’s not her problem.

Rey slides into the driver’s seat, wincing as hot leather burns her thighs. PUSH TO START, one button reads. One eyebrow quirks. Surely it can’t be that easy?

She jumps as it roars to life, louder than she’d thought it would be. CLOSE DOOR, the monitor behind the steering wheel blinks at her. BUCKLE SEAT BELT. It beeps this time, getting angrier and angrier the longer she takes. Once she’s situated, the screen presents her with two options: AUTOPILOT? MANUAL?

“Autopilot,” she says, but nothing happens. “Autopilot,” she says more forcefully. Still nothing. She frowns, until she notices the buttons on the steering wheel: up and down indicators and a button that reads OK. She presses the up arrow until AUTOPILOT is shaded in grey. OK.

“You have selected autopilot.” A soothing female voice comes through the speakers, making her jump again. “Where would you like to go?”

Oh, no. She hadn’t thought that through. Rey closes her eyes to think: she knows she’s in California, but she’s in a suburb. She needs to be in a city. Any city; it doesn’t really matter which.

All the needs to is think of a place to go. She can figure the rest out from there.

“San Francisco?”

“Starting route to San Francisco.” The locks on the car doors click automatically, and Rey grabs onto the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip as the car starts to roll backwards. “Expect traffic delays. Anticipated drive time is approximately one hour and fifteen minutes.”

Okay. That’s not that long, she thinks. She can manage that easily. Nodding to herself, she settles back into the seat and tries her best to relax.

“Play Blondie on the radio, please.”


End file.
